


one more hallway

by notaquadrilateral



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: AU-Typical gore, Canon-Typical Spiral Fuckery, Canon-Typical Violence, Hanahaki AU, I do not know how to tag, M/M, Soulmate AU, also one of my first fics in general (and it also shows), basically what you'd expect when you read "hanahaki gerrymichael", buckle up y'all this may or may not be the length intended, it's really just a little bit of blood and flowers, this is my first fic on this site and it shows
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-18
Updated: 2020-05-19
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:21:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24260491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notaquadrilateral/pseuds/notaquadrilateral
Summary: Almost everything he did then was think about the difficult and/or dangerous work, and the tone of her voice, and the fact that he didn’t even want to think about what would happen if she had to be replaced, but the truth was there were several things he liked about being the Archivist’s assistant, just things he didn’t dwell on. For starters, he had learned more-- not just about the paranormal, but about the world in general. People skills, coping mechanisms… and he’d met Gerard, the book hunter.AU in which Gerard Keay and Michael Shelley fall in love, ft. the Hanahaki disease[2/29/21] AN: It’s been, like, two years, but I will be continuing this :)
Relationships: Gerard Keay/Michael Shelley, Gerard Keay/Michael | The Distortion
Comments: 2
Kudos: 33





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Michael's understanding of romance is very, very rough, and mostly consists of an amalgamation of knowledge he's pieced together from various romcoms, Christmas Hallmark movies, and the statements in the archives about dying couples.
> 
> You can see how his knowledge is flawed.
> 
> (Title is from Almost Every Door by The Mountain Goats.)

Michael couldn’t have imagined his promotion being this strange.

Originally, his incentive for joining the Institute involved trying to understand what had happened to him. It probably should have been expected that he’d get a lot more when they didn’t say a word about his diagnoses-- in all honesty, he had expected them to turn him away because of the schizophrenia alone. But, he was wrong, and he would later find out that several of his coworkers were far, far worse off. Regardless, when he joined, he really only had one goal in mind, but with the job he had he didn’t really have access to learning about if anyone else had encounters with strange doors or missing people-- so he worked.  
His work ethic had always changed like the weather (according to his parents, at least). Growing up, he’d been somewhat of a gifted kid, which didn’t really help him at all when it came to that… and then there was Ryan, who…. no, his thoughts were getting off-track again. The promotion. Right.

Michael had been promoted after-- something, he didn’t know what-- happened to the Archivist’s previous assistant. He was honestly surprised when it came, especially because he was so much younger than a lot of the staff working there. Apparently, the Head Archivist-- Gertrude Robinson-- had said something about his “unparalleled intellect” and his being “a talented analytic”, or something, but judging by the image of the frail woman who hardly ever spoke to him (and when she did, it was in a sharp tone), he doubted those words had been hers.  
Eventually, though, there came a point where his working for the Institute mattered less about him finding out what happened and more about finding himself. He started to actually enjoy what he was doing, which was something that he was very glad to discover about himself.

Almost everything he did then was think about the difficult and/or dangerous work, and the tone of her voice, and the fact that he didn’t even want to think about what would happen if she had to be replaced, but the truth was there were several things he liked about being the Archivist’s assistant, just things he didn’t dwell on. For starters, he had learned more-- not just about the paranormal, but about the world in general. People skills, coping mechanisms… and he’d met Gerard, the book hunter.

The Hanahaki Disease was something that was taught to everyone who was able to attend some kind of education (or, everyone with some kind of guardian who was able to teach them). The rules were simple-- you go through life. If you fall in love (and not like platonic love, it had to be genuine, real, deep romantic love), it has to be requited. If it’s not, you get the surgery. Some people couldn’t afford the surgery, some people couldn’t afford the loss of their side of the romance that came along with it. Rarely now did people die from it-- at least, in the “normal” perception of the world. Now that he was at the Institute, and an archivist no less, he’d seen more than his fair share of cases involving victims suffering from the disease’s final stages.

Nonetheless, he’d had a small crush in middle school that hadn’t actually carried any flower petals with it, but other than that, he had been fine. But, as he thought, things got terrifying once he met Gerard.

Gerard Keay had been born into the Institute, from what he knew. Michael had heard about his father, hell, he was pretty sure he’d even met his father once or twice, but he didn’t have any lasting memories of the man, so when the punk-aesthetic person with dyed hair appeared a few days after he had started the new job, he wasn’t really sure what to think.

Gertrude hadn’t spent long introducing him to Gerard. Michael loved to think that she had said something like, “Oh, this is Gerard Keay, he’s working here after the death of his father. He has been tracking down the books that were scattered when Jurgen Leitner’s library was destroyed, and I’ve been involved in the investigations,”, but it was definitely more something like “This is Gerard, you’ll see him around a lot when working with me. He destroys books. Now, could you please get that report I was asking for?” and she had probably said it with that tone that made him think of his own mother, which wasn’t always a bad thing (but in this case, it had been), and-- he was getting off-topic.

Sure enough, after several conversations and several all-nighters spent looking through the archives for mentions of what the two called “Leitners”, he had organized a one-on-one conversation with Gerard. Most of the time, he barely even saw the person, and he had to admit, this was incredibly intimidating, especially because the hunter was ever-so-slightly attractive (and maybe absolutely out of his league). That’s where the terror came in-- part of him didn’t want to die, but he didn’t even know if this was a real thing yet. There was a very, very good chance it was a small crush, and he’d be over it once he heard the man speak or saw something that scared him or something.

Now that he was sitting at a desk in the archives, there wasn’t much going back-- he had already scheduled everything-- but part of him wanted to back out badly. He had hardly made an impression on the man without his boss being there, so there was a pretty good chance that this was the first big-time. He shivered a bit against the back of the seat and took a few minutes to actually pull himself together-- this would be fine, everything would be fine. Part of him couldn’t stop thinking “what if” statements and the other part was yelling at that half to shut up-- so at least 50% of him was stable at that moment.

Then he entered the room.

Michael’s first thoughts when he saw Gerard, up close, in person, as the only other one in the room, probably involved how strange he probably looked, having been staring at the entrance for several minutes. The book hunter didn’t seem to notice, though, which definitely reassured him some. Once he sat down at the big round table, the majority of his thoughts were directed towards getting out of this encounter alive. He fought back the urge to cough (which he then ignored) and exhaled slowly.

“Hello-- you’re here to discuss the… uh, the Leitner, right?” Michael’s eyes drifted down to the files in front of him. “I think I… I mean, I’ve found a few locations that we’ve been looking into, and…”  
He made the mistake of looking back up at Gerard and began to trail off. “Oh, Gertrude is on a-- a trip, she didn’t really tell me when… wh-where she was going, but she said she’d be back within the next few days, so, uh… she asked me to debrief you… when it came to the Leitners? I’m still getting… adjusted…” He let out a small, quiet nervous laugh. His eyes fell back onto the papers, highlighting locations and the activities of… something. Admittingly, he didn’t understand a lot about the Leitners or the groups trying to track them down. Gertrude didn’t have the time-- he liked to think-- to run down everything that was happening with the books, so his knowledge was pretty minimal--

“...uh, you’re staring. Are you gonna talk to me about what you found, or…?”  
Gerard’s eyes met Michael’s and he swore that he felt his cheeks turn red. He blinked, taking a few moments to readjust himself.  
“Yes! Yeah, I’m sorry. I was just... er.. thinking.”

Gerard sighed. “...please get on with it.”

Michael nodded and took a few papers from the manila folder in front of him. “So… uh… we had been reviewing statements a while back, there were a lot of incidents around this one area near Cornwall that we found similarities in. There… there was this woman that everyone making the… statements would mention, apparently, she would travel around the small towns, because all of them happened at like… small-town cafes, right? And there were incidents where she’d… she, uh, would sit there, reading a book, and she’d never turn the page she’d just stare at this one page, and one guy managed to get a look at it, it was a drawing looking… it looked like a big ink drawing of the sea? Like some kind of reception next to the sea. And everything was normal like this, right, I mean, people could be weird---”  
He would look up at Gerard every few seconds to make sure he was listening, but the majority of the time Gerard just stared at him with the “please hurry expression”, and deep down Michael was pretty sure the book hunter probably hated him.

“...but, uh, we found that exactly 24 hours after her leaving every place, there would be these weird storms over them--- like, bad wind, bad… bad rain? And all of the buildings were found covered in mud and dust and water and there were several people who were suffocated in the basements and the cellars because somehow the dirt had stuffed itself down there. I was… I mean, I originally found the connection, so I went to Gertrude and we discussed it and she said that it was very likely that it’d be a Leitner, but that she’d be out of town so I needed to get you, and… and here we are.”

There was a very, very uncomfortable silence for a few moments before Gerard finally spoke up in reply to Michael’s statements.

“Aight, then we’ll head down there. You said Gertrude’s getting back in about a week?”  
Michael nodded.  
“...and when did these all happen?”

“Uh… the most recent one was last week, I think. The oldest once was around last month.”

“How many died?”

“The average is, uh… three per incident. We have a total of twenty-six deaths from either suffocation or inhalation.”

“Is there a hotspot, or are they dotted around Cornwall?”

“Most of the recent ones have… uh… been in or near Fowey. Southern, near the coast.”

Gerard nodded and sighed. “...did Gertrude leave anything else for you?”

Michael shook his head. “Not that I’ve found… er, sorry.”  
He watched the hunter in front of him with curiosity as he stood up and started to walk towards Gertrude’s office. The assistant pondered going to join him for a few seconds but ultimately decided that waiting there for the hunter’s return would be the better decision. Sure enough, after the noise of Gerard digging around passed, he emerged with a file and took another seat at the table.

Michael’s eyes stayed glued to the files in Gerard’s hands. “Uh… what’re those?”

“Records,” he muttered (as if that really specified anything). They were in the archives, for heaven’s sake, what else would the hunter have with him?

A few more seconds of uncomfortable silence passed as Gerard sat there, going through the papers that Michael had never seen before.

“Do you know how to defend yourself?”

That was a… very strange question, but Michael was keen to maintain a conversation with Gerard, so he answered.  
“I’ve attended a few… I mean, Gertrude taught me the basics of shooting a handgun, I know the basics when it comes to disarming people--- she said it was in preparation for an attack or something, though why someone would attack the Institute goes over my head--”

“Have you ever been to a Leitner job?”

“Uh… no, no I don’t… think so?”

“Would you want to come to fetch this one?”

Michael paled. He was never much of an outside investigator, that was really more of Gertrude’s thing. He’d just file, translate, go through records, search for clues, et cetera et cetera. And, if he was being honest, he really wanted to say yes. There were several reasons-- he’d spend time with Gerard, maybe be able to befriend him? Maybe he’d appeal to Gertrude, she’d be proud of him for doing that, and she’d trust him more. He could learn more about what was going on, as all he currently knew about Leitners were that they related to fear. His eyes traveled down to the table as he thought.

“It’s alright, you don’t gotta make your decision right now.”  
His eyes snapped back up to look at Gerard. The hunter appeared to tear off a piece of paper from one of the documents and scribble something on it. He stood up, walked over to Michael, and put it on the table in front of him.  
“Uh… text or call me if you get interested. I’ll be heading down there in a few days, so you’ll have to make it pretty quickly.”

A subtle blush spread across Michael’s face. He kept his eyes locked on the piece of paper, displaying ten numbers-- a phone number, Gerard’s number-- as the hunter spoke. This was it. He was given a number. Wasn’t this how relationships worked? Someone would give a number and say “call me” or something, and then they’d go on a date. That was… pretty much the extent of Michael’s knowledge of romance, what he had gathered from small romcoms and movies from Hallmark. Though, he wasn’t sure if tracking down a magic book that killed people was really much of a “date”--

But before he could muster the courage to respond, Gerard had waved goodbye and left the archives.  
Michael let out a sigh and picked up the piece of paper before folding it and placing it in his pocket. He had half the mind to enter it into his phone when he got home, but it would be a while before he would be able to calm his nerves enough to call the man.

As he left the institute once his work for the day ended, he tried to not pay attention to the growing cough in his throat.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He rang the missed number again and held his phone up to his ear after checking to see if there were any voicemails. Normally he wouldn’t (as he assumed they were spam), but given the situation and the fact that he had previously given out his number to a very specific person, he decided that this time, he’d call back.
> 
> He was glad he did so.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gerry goes on another Leitner job while waiting for Michael's response.  
> He doesn't expect him to call so soon.
> 
> (This chapter's a little shorter than originally planned. It's a little filler-y in all honesty, but it'll be building up to something.)

Looking back on the moment, Gerard realized he had probably been sending mixed signals, what with the number and the whole “do you want to come on a super dangerous mission with me” thing.

It wasn’t that he liked Michael. Well, that was… not really right. He liked Michael, but he wasn’t sure how he did. He hardly knew the assistant, but he’d admit that he was… pretty magnetic. The book hunter didn’t really make friends anymore, not with the risk of them being killed or kidnapped or harmed, especially in his line of work--- but people like Michael had already been introduced to the craziness that was the world of fear. Part of him was hoping that maybe just once, maybe just this time, he didn’t have to turn everyone away.

Gertrude hadn’t mentioned him too much, other than the fact that she wasn’t telling him much about the rituals and the Leitners, and that he was still in the dark about a lot of things. Gerard didn’t really want to break him that quickly, but part of him very much badly wanted to explain to Michael the world that they were in. He wouldn’t understand that if he continued working with Gertrude. So, he would admit that giving Michael his number may not have been the most efficient way to discuss the whole Leitner job-- but that wasn’t the only reason he did it. And, yes, he’d admit that the assistant was cute in his own way. From what Gerard knew, he was pretty nice, he seemed to want to be helpful… but it was really too early for him to know if he liked him like that. Again, he hardly knew him-- there was really just something that made it very difficult for him to stop thinking about him.

So, instead, he resorted to doing his job as a distraction.

Two big Leitner jobs in just a few days. Honestly, if he didn’t know better, he’d think they were connected-- but from what Michael said, the one in Cornwall was Buried, and the one he was working on at the moment was Dark. He doubted there was any correlation.

He held a knife close to his side as he stepped through the dark alleyway, his back pressed to the side of the stone building. His surroundings were humid (and it had just rained), so the air was difficult to breathe in. Ironic, seeing as this wasn’t involved with the Buried in any way, shape, or form. In response to hearing the crinkle of leaves nearby, he stopped moving and kept tight to the wall. Paranoia? The thought crossed his mind for half a second before he heard a voice.

“I don’t understand why you need to do this outside,” it spoke. Feminine, by the sound of it, but he couldn’t really be sure. It didn’t matter, he had enough information from Gertrude to assure that this was a Dark Leitner, so he already came more than prepared. He couldn’t rely on sight by any means in an environment like this-- which was a shame, because as soon as he saw the book, all he had to do was attack, hopefully kill, and leave with it alive. He’ll admit, it sounded easier in his head. It had been, for several years. 

“I didn’t want her hearing me, you can go back inside once we’re done.”  
This one was masculine, and now that he paid more attention, the latter of the voices definitely sounded distorted, like it was being played from a phone. He very much hoped that meant that there was only one person there-- it’d be easier for him to fight then.  
There was a long silence after that, one that made his hairs stand on end. He kept his breathing shallow and quiet; loss of breath was a small price to pay for the benefit of a surprise.

“I’ll call you back later, need to look at something.”  
After a muffled protest from the second voice, Gerard was pleased to hear the delightful sound of the end call tone. His victory was short-lived, though, because immediately after they hung up, he could hear their footsteps drawing closer.   
He must’ve been found.

Well, he decided, there was no hope in waiting for the element to leave-- after a very swift countdown in his head, he went for the attack on the avatar with the knife firmly held in his hand. They didn’t appear to be that muscly, which was very convenient for him. It meant there wasn’t as big of a limit on what he could pull to get the book in their hands.  
He went for a tackle and threw a misleading punch past their head. Their fist ran just past his jaw; it wasn’t his goal, but he didn’t want to lose any teeth, so he wrapped his free hand around their wrist and pulled it back. He was met with a grunt from the other, but it didn’t matter too much in the heat of battle. He dug the knife from his dominant hand aiming for the chest of his opponent, but with the terrible fighting conditions and the fact that he had just received a knee to the gut, he missed and lodged it into their shoulder.

They let out a pretty loud yell and he could barely make out them grabbing the wound. They ran blindly, throwing another punch that distracted him enough for them to knock him to the ground.  
Fuck.

He did his best to roll into the fall, but it hurt just as much as it would have anyway. His vision fell blurry-- as if the darkness wasn’t bad enough-- and he had to spare a second to rub his face. He didn’t need to be able to see his hand to notice that his nose was now bleeding profusely… which was great. Wonderful. He had gotten distracted.  
He ducked when their foot passed over their head and instead grabbed their ankle. He did his best to shove them to the ground, which actually succeeded-- and the book wasn’t on their person anymore. He had two options-- kill or run.  
Well, obviously he couldn’t do the former. They’d come after him eventually.

Gerard looked around for the knife he had dropped and remembered that they were still bleeding from their shoulder blade. He took the knife and pressed their hand to the wound before digging the knife into the top of their neck under their jaw, killing them quickly.  
He snatched the Leitner up from the ground and leaned himself against the wall for a few moments to catch his breath. Blood from his (probably broken) nose dripped onto the pavement beneath him and his breath came out in short wheezes, but otherwise, he was alright. His gaze traveled back over to the corpse of the avatar for a few moments, and the only thing keeping him from feeling bad for the person was the fact that there was a very large amount of evidence stating that they had killed several other people. The situation was pretty par for the course for Leitner jobs.  
After disposing of the body, he smashed the phone the avatar had been carrying with the steel-tip of his boot and walked out of the alleyway after concealing the shit he’d gathered and brought-- he’d rather not have anyone approach him asking about the blood or the knife or the very strange looking book in his hands. 

A small walk and a bus ride later and he managed to make it back to his flat without dying. He stepped to the side of the building to the dumpster in the alleyway and took a lighter out of his pocket, the flame illuminating the area a small radius around him. He pressed the flame to the side of the book and tossed it to the ground near the dumpster, amongst a stain on the concrete from a few previous burnings there. As the pages burned, he took his cellphone out of his pocket.  
Two missed calls from a number he didn’t recognize, and a message from Gertrude reminding him to call him after the job. God, he was busy.

He rang the missed number again and held his phone up to his ear after checking to see if there were any voicemails. Normally he wouldn’t (as he assumed they were spam), but given the situation and the fact that he had previously given out his number to a very specific person, he decided that this time, he’d call back.

He was glad he did so.


End file.
